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Century 21 - New Business Models in Travel

Speakers

Henry Lane Fox, Head of New Ideas
lastminute.com
lastminute.com’s objective is to encourage spontaneous, romantic and occasionally adventurous behaviour. For travel companies, the business has established itself as a channel for moving distressed inventory, mostly selling products within 14 days of departure.

Karen Gee, Director UK Marketing
eDreams
eDreams plans to be a pan-European online leisure travel retailer. Its Vacation Finder is a key element of the company's plans to create the 'Expert Source for the World's Best Vacations' by matching clients to holidays.

Penny Gray, Business Development Manager
EMAP Online
Over 2 years ago EMAP Online lauched Bargainholidays. It has continued to create new online businesses, including 1ski.com and escaperoutes.net. As a result, EMAP Online has become one of the largest online leisure travel retailers.

Richard Downs, Chief Executive Officer
IGLU.com
IGLU.com has created a specialist ski and snowboarding site with a database of 5,000 properties and a nice line in 'fuzzy logic' matching via their 'Ski Forager'. The organisation is also one of the first virtual tour operators, contracting and selling its own products.

Andrew Weir - Chief Information Officer
ebookers.com
ebookers.com was launched in September 1999 with the objective of becoming Europe's preferred online travel retailer on the Web. The business, which was born out of London-based Flightbookers, already has offices in several European countries.

Christina Convis, Channel Manager, Travel
ntl Interactive
ntl is a major cable TV/telecommunications provider. It is on the threshold of launching its digital interactive service. One of the clear messages coming from experiences with interactive Digital TV is that it gives a huge boost to impulse purchases such as short breaks. Are we about to have a whole industry re-invented from the living room?

Will Vicary, Sales Manager
Open Interactive
A research study commissioned by Open shows that shoppers can reduce stress levels by using services such as those on interactive TV. Open is jointly owned by BSkyB, BT, HSBC and Matsushita. Its interactive TV service was launched on 12 October and will give the first evidence of whether consumers will indeed buy travel directly from their televisions.

Marc Charron, Travel Product Director
QXL
Until recently, buying travel products in an auction would have been thought of as revolutionary. But this way of doing business is steadily becoming accepted as a valid method of online travel retailing. QXL's recent public share offering created huge publicity for this leading Internet auction house.

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